Paint Valley 'family' offers hair to support student with cancer

Jan. 18, 2013

The current and former Paint Valley High School classmates of Sydney Hodge, center, dyed strips of their hair purple or shaved their heads in a show of support for Hodge, who was diagnosed with lymphoma several days before Christmas. / Brent Lewis/Gazette

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Gazette Staff Writer

Sydney Hodge shaves the head of her boyfriend, Dylan Fewster. / Photo Courtesy of Donnie Brownfield

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BAINBRIDGE — It was pretty easy this week to pick out Sydney Hodge’s friends at Paint Valley High School.

They were the ones with streaks of purple in their hair or hardly any hair at all.

In a show of support for the Paint Valley senior — who was diagnosed with lymphoma several days before Christmas — dozens of her current and former classmates crowded into her Bourneville home Jan. 10 to have their hair dyed or shaved off.

“I didn’t think anyone would come,” Hodge said.

The response was quite the opposite. At one point, the house was so packed that “people had to go outside because it was so hot in there,” she said.

“It was unbelievable,” said her mother, Carol Adkins.

Hodge even got to join in the fun at one point. She grabbed a pair of clippers and shaved the head of her boyfriend, Dylan Fewster, who organized the get-together along with Adkins. They created a Facebook event to encourage people to attend and named it “Spero for Sydney.”

“Spero” is Latin for “I hope.”

“I thought it would be a good way for everyone to show Sydney how many people care about her and support her and that she’s not alone,” said Fewster, a 2012 graduate of Paint Valley.

Hodge’s classmates said they didn’t think twice about whether to alter their hair in her honor.

“The way I felt is, if it can help her and let her know we’re behind her, I’m all for it,” Riley Markko said.

“This is a family, not just a school,” Tyler Matthews said, explaining why so many people volunteered.

Hodge, 17, experienced a series of seemingly insignificant health issues in 2012, including labored breathing, a dry cough that came and went, and itching across her body with no visible rashes. In October, a lump appeared on the left side of her neck. She figured it was just a swollen lymph node but, at the urging of the school nurse, agreed to have it checked out.

A visit to the emergency room prompted a visit to Hodge’s family doctor, which resulted in her visiting an ear-nose-throat doctor. Five days before Christmas, she was diagnosed with lymphoma.

That diagnosis has since been narrowed to nodular sclerosing Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a treatable form of cancer that will require chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Hodge has undergone a series of tests, biopsies and, just Thursday, several full-body screenings to help determine the severity of the disease. She will likely miss a significant amount of school this spring, her mother said.

“I’ve learned a lot about her I didn’t know. She’s very strong,” Adkins said.

“She’s been really positive and upbeat about the whole thing,” Fewster said. “That’s why we had the party, to show our support now so she knows going into it how many people are behind her.”

Hodge’s longtime friend, Taylor Mills, said “it feels awful to see her go through this, but I know she’ll come out stronger.”